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User blog:Ace1580/Forgiveness
I feel like over the last week or two, I’ve had a lot of discussions with people about forgiveness. Through these conversations, my mind has been opened up to a few answers, but a lot more questions, and some of them very hard, which shouldn’t surprise any of us. With the events of the day, I feel like it’s a really appropriate time to put some of my thoughts out there. Before I start, let me say that this morning I prayed for a number of things, for the healing of those injured, and for the peace of the families who lost loved ones, or who are otherwise connected to this travesty. But I also prayed that God would enact justice upon the person responsible. This divine justice will play into the rest my thoughts, but I pointed that out because I don’t want to give the impression that I believe the Christian thing to do here is to try to show how holy and pious we are by coming down on the people who want to see justice served. God is all about justice, and I want nothing more to see the world where the innocent are protected and the evil destroyed, and soon. But in the meantime, we have to deal with the reality of this broken world, and how we respond to it. I was having a conversation with someone the other day who asked a poignant question. Do we have to forgive someone who hasn’t first repented? Do we have to forgive someone if they haven’t apologized? It’s appropriate here. I doubt that James Holmes, the man responsible for at least 12 deaths today, is repentant. Oftentimes, I’ve heard Christians say that we need not forgive someone if they don’t repent. There’s this idea that repentance and forgiveness is transactional. That you first must receive repentance, and then can offer forgiveness. The miracle of the cross does not do away with this transactional concept in forgiveness. But what distinguishes a Christian perspective of forgiveness from the secular paradigm, is that the economy of the transaction is reversed. We are called to first offer up forgiveness, in the hope that the transaction is completed with repentance. If you aren’t sure about this, consider salvation. The grace of God that led him to put his son upon the cross is designed to lead you to repentance. In the economy of God, forgiveness comes first, and then repentance. As a Christian, this means taking a risk. While true restoration requires forgiveness and repentance, it may be that we forgive, and never receive that repentance in return. When Christ died, the avenue for reconciliation was extended to everyone, but not everyone accepts it. For some lives, those who never repent of their sins, Christ died in vain. How can we do this? How can we forgive someone when doing so is, essentially give up our right to justice? It requires to things, and both of them hinge on God. First, think of the story in Matthew 18 of the man who owed the king millions. Often we look at this as a lesson that if we don’t forgive others, we will not be forgiven ourselves, but I want to take a look at it from a slightly different angle. When the unforgiving debtor owed the king millions, it would have been fiscally irresponsible to let any debt owed him go unpaid. After all, if you owe someone a million dollars, and someone owes you twenty, technically that twenty doesn’t belong to you, it belongs to the person you owe. But as the story plays out, the king cancels the debt of the unforgiving man. At that point, with no debt over his own head, the unforgiving man has the freedom to cancel the debts owed him. We read on that he made the decision not to do so, and was punished, but the thing I want to point out is that it was only after having his own debt cancelled, that he could cancel anyone else’s. Guess what? The debt we owe, the condemnation to death that we have earned, has been canceled, and now we have the ability to let go of the debts others owe us. By God’s promise of eternal life, we can give up our lives. Secondly, there’s this idea of judgment. While our judgment is horribly flawed, God’s is perfect. In order to be able to let go of someone’s offense against us and forgive them without assurance of repentance means that we have to trust that at some point God’s righteous judgment will be enacted against evil. By knowing that in the end, he will bring justice, we can let go of our need to enact it ourselves. Now before I catch flack, I want to clarify something. I don’t think that this means we should let this guy go, or simply “forget” that what he did happened. That kind of “forgiveness” will only lead to him sinning against others again. I think he should be locked up, and prosecuted, because one of the purposes of the government is to bring to justice (worldly justice at least) the people who do evil. His ability to do harm should be neutered. After all, forgiveness doesn’t always do away with the consequences of our actions. But I would encourage you to take some time to think about this stuff. I don’t have all the answers, and I don’t expect that this will make the reality of evil people in a broken world hurting others any easier. But as you think about forgiveness, I want you to ponder Jesus Christ, after whom we are called to model our lives. When Jesus hung upon the cross, he begged his father to forgive the people responsible for crucifying him, people who neither knew what they were doing was wrong, nor sought forgiveness. Category:Blog posts